Shuriken launcher. Ash’s left cyberarm contains a launching system for wireless, smartlink-enabled shuriken that fire from the base of the palm. The smartlink-enabled shuriken transmit data on wind and other atmospheric conditions as they fly, allowing subsequent shots to be more accurate.

Ultrasonic sensor. Ash’s cranium has an ultrasonic sensor that allows her to “see” through echolocation in lieu of her normal vision.

Control rig. Ash’s oldest serious cyberware augmentation is a control rig, which allows her to interface directly with any vehicle that has the appropriate modifications.

Gear:

Cavalier Arms Alamo EBR. The Alamo is Ash’s primary firearm. This “enhanced battle rifle” straddles the line between an assault rifle and sniper rifle: it is less precise and less powerful than a true sniper rifle but more precise and more powerful than an assault rifle, with a burst fire mode that true sniper rifles lack but a smaller magazine than a true assault rifle (20 rounds). It comes factory-standard with recoil-reducing shock pad built into the stock and a detachable imaging scope that is both camera and telescopic sight. The imaging scope has also been modified with an ultragraphic imaging system, allowing her to see in the higher wavelengths of the visible spectrum, and a smartlink system that allows Ash to see through it, enhancing her accuracy with the weapon, as well as monitor heat buildup in the barrel and ammunition levels, switch firing modes and even fire the weapon without physically pulling the trigger.

Ares Predator V. This popular heavy pistol is Ash’s primary sidearm. An extremely common weapon, Ash values it primarily for its factory-standard smartlink system.

Retractable glaive. Ash’s primary melee weapon is a vibromatic glaive with an extendable haft. The weapon can be worn at the side like a long knife or short sword, the haft extending and locking into place with a twist of the handle or wireless command.

Flight goggles. Ash wears a pair of polarized sunshade goggles that also include basic avionics, showing her speed, altitude, and attitude while gliding.

Body armor. When running or engaging in vigilante activities, Ash wears a suit of full body armor liberated from the stores of her former employer. The suit is well designed for freedom of movement, and Ash’s natural strength and cyberware augmentations allow her to bear its weight without difficulty, but it is too bulky to be concealed or mistaken for anything other than what it is. Ash has colored the suit in blacks and greys to better blend into shadows, and added a set of shock frills: fur-like strips that stand on end when charged, providing an electrical shock to anybody that touches them. She wears a set of gecko gloves (actually gloves, boots, and knee- and elbow pads) that allows her to cling to vertical surfaces.

Grapple gun. Ash carries a grapple gun with a variety of grappling “hooks,” with 100 feet of rope that can support up to 400 kilograms.

Thundercloud Contrail. Ash’s prized crotch rocket is a popular model in both the racing and combat bike circuits. Her Contrail has been modified with a hidden Stoner-Ares M202 medium machine gun and salvaged body armor plates welded to its frame, and a cybernetic control rig that allows Ash to jump into the vehicle, controlling it as her own body. The footrests of the Contrail are designed to catapult her into the air, allowing her to gain more altitude than she could by simply jumping off the bike.

Bio:

Ashleigh was born in 2054 in Auburn. She grew up in an all-female household, raised by a single mother and grandmother. Ashleigh was the only one of her siblings to survive to late childhood: her older sister Layla died of the flu at the age of three, her younger sister Hope died shortly after birth due to malnutrition in the womb caused by her mother’s poor diet, and her baby brother Grinder was accidentally killed in a gang shootout near the family home.

The Greys were poor but hard-working. Ashleigh’s mother Tamra was determined to keep the family in Auburn, which, despite Grinder’s unfortunate death, was still a safer and more affluent neighborhood than they could truly afford. She put in long hours as a laundress and sold food out of a food cart in her spare time, largely leaving the housework and childcare to Ashleigh’s grandmother Ilana.

Though school was difficult for a poor ork girl of average intelligence, Ash managed to stay on the periphery of gang life growing up. Her early physical development and natural strength helped her join her school’s cheerleading squad, and she studied martial arts at a dojo whose laundry Tamra did for free. At nights and on weekends she would sneak away to the racing circuits – a rough crowd, but one in which serious violence was unlikely to break out.

Despite managing to stay out of trouble, both Ashleigh and her family wanted something better for her. At sixteen she joined the Hatsuishi Robotics security force. Desperate to make the most of the opportunity, she threw herself into the company and was promoted out of the ranks of line officers to become a rigger. The concomitant technical training was the highest education anybody in her family had ever achieved at the time. She spent as much of her free time as she could learning about the technology she was intended to operate, pestering Hyperion Void in the research department to understand her drones better and tinkering with her gear.

Ashleigh’s dedication saw her transferred to the corporation’s special tactical teams, piloting their armored transports and providing reconnaissance via aerial drones. Shortly after her transfer, the truck she was piloting was ambushed by shadowrunners. The Hatsuishi team prevailed in the sharp hand-to-hand fight that followed, with no corporate fatalities, and managed to capture a young ork ganger girl hired by the runners as extra muscle. Ashleigh’s team leader ordered her to execute the prisoner to prove her mettle, which she did without hesitation.

Subsequent years saw Ashleigh in close proximity to fighting on a regular basis, though usually while safely jumped into a vehicle or drone. Still, she had ample opportunity to witness, and perpetrate, corporate brutality against those who opposed the system. As many of these were denizens of slums such as those in which she grew up, a gradual dissatisfaction with her work began to set in. The breaking point was a raid to recover some technology stolen by AI rights activists, which itself had been stolen by Hatsuishi from another corporation. The activists were unusually well connected, and holed up in a high-rise penthouse protected by hired muscle and turreted guns. Rather than expose themselves to fire from the turrets by attempting to insert at the top of the building, Ashleigh’s team plowed their transport directly into the heart of the lower floors and stormed up from within. Reaching the heart of the apartment complex by plowing blind through apartment after apartment without crumpling the vehicle against any structural supports was a tricky bit of piloting, and the raid was successful. However, in the aftermath, Ashleigh realized that she and her team had demolished the homes of dozens of destitute families, and killed many of them in the fighting, including one man crushed beneath her armored van. In her heavy duty corporate-issue body armor, none of the survivors whose lives had been shattered could have guessed that Ashleigh had grown up in a complex only marginally better than this one. Nor, she knew from experience, could they have resisted activists or shadowrunners who chose to operate in their building, and thus placed them in the crossfire.

Following the activist raid, Ashleigh stole away into the slums of Everett with all the equipment she could carry, determined to protect the innocent from the depradations of corporations, shadowrunners, and gangs alike. She was twenty. Early on in her new vigilante career, she encountered Mala Sarcassa and her newly founded clinic, helping Mala to defend it against a young gang that hoped to extort protection money from the new enterprise. Though better armed and armored in her strike team-issue gear than the attackers, Ashleigh was heavily outnumbered, and mortally wounded by the end of the fight. Mala saved her life, and she became an unofficial guardian of the clinic in exchange for free medical services. Mala and Lincoln Andover also installed Ashleigh’s cyberarms and leg myomers, acquired from a gang that had just pulled off a high-stakes heist against a corporate warehouse and was ragged and depleted from a running gun battle with corporate security.

Over the following three years, Ashleigh has become a fairly successful vigilante. She has had many successful clashes with the local gangs. She uses all the force multipliers at her disposal: Hyperion’s reconnaissance drone, her gymnastic ability to reach unconventional surveillance and ambush sites, and her natural and cybernetic ability to fight in darkness, to terrorize and demoralize her opponents so that she does not need to slay every one of them. Using these tactics, hers is a name that can make any small-time operator in Everett wary. The mob and yakuza are largely unconcerned with her, considering themselves too big to be disrupted by one woman, while Ashleigh herself recognizes that she will need more resources to take on such established organizations.

Despite the success of her vigilantism, Ashleigh has not found the peace she was looking for when she left Hatsuishi. More and more she recognizes that the small-time gangs and thugs she preys upon are simply desperate poor kids who didn’t have the opportunity to get out that she did. She began to fend off the resultant sense of futility through the use of moodchips, and then began to depend upon them to give her any sense of stability over her emotional life. Ash is now a thoroughly addicted chiphead.

The despair of her situation ultimately led her to shadowrunning less than a year ago. Her association with Mala opened her eyes to the fact that corrupt corporate influence is ultimately to blame for the debased state of society that drives the poor and defenseless to turn upon each other, and if she truly wishes to defend them, she will have to turn her sights to corporations.